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We received a suggestion in our suggestion box to share that Google Docs is a great free alternative to Microsoft Word. This is a collaborative post with the EMC and ITG Help Desk.

Google Docs

With our Google@UH G Suite accounts, we (including students) have access to free Google apps including, Google Docs, which you can use as an alternative to Microsoft Word. A few of the added benefits of Google Docs are:

It lives online so you can access it from anywhere you have Internet connection.

You can share and collaborate on docs with other users.

If you need your Google Doc as a Word doc, it has the ability to download as a Word doc and other formats such as PDF and RTF.

Talk to Books is an experimental artificial intelligence (AI) service from Google that lets you browse passages from books. The AI is trained on human conversations and learns from what you ask it. It then predicts a likely human response to give back to you from a database of sentences in over 100,000 books. Learn more on how it works. Ask Talk to Books a question to try it out for yourself!

If you use Mozilla Firefox, you might have noticed it hasn’t been working well with Google Drive and Docs. Use Google Chrome for the best experience. You can download it for free at https://www.google.com/chrome/.

Additionally, with Chrome, you can also install handy extensions (they’re like mini apps that run off of the Chrome browser) like an AdBlocker, web clipper for saving online articles, bookmark manager and more. Check out this list of 35 best Google Chrome extensions.

Google Calendar now helps you to make the most of your time with their new feature, Goals. Goals allow you to make time for things that matter to you whether it may be to exercise, do chores, get together with friends, or whatever it may be. We all have those things that we know we need to do but never seem to have the time to do. Well now with Goals in Google Calendar, there are no excuses! Goals will help you find time in your day for what’s important and can also help you to start making healthy habits like exercising daily. It even has the ability to defer goals if something unexpected comes up. Or if your goal conflicts with another event, Google Calendar will automatically reschedule your goal.

Try it today by downloading and installing the Google Calendar app for Android or iPhone.

If you have an iPhone/iPad and if like me, you have default apps such as “Tips”, “Game Center”, and “News” that you never use, until now, we have been unable to delete them off of our devices. So the next best thing was to move them all into a folder and move it to your last home screen to get them out of the way.

The downside is this trick only hides your apps temporarily — the next time you reboot your device, all of the hidden apps will reappear in the folder.

The good news is that with the next version if iOS (9.3), you will have the ability to hide those apps permanently. It is a more advanced process, but if you are interested in the secret, keep a look out for a future Tech It Out Tips post.

Have you ever wanted to connect your laptop, phone, or tablet to the LEE WiFi network automatically without having to sign in every time? You can use UH ITS Wireless Passthrough service at: http://hawaii.edu/wireless/pt/. It’s easy and super convenient! All you’ll need is your device’s MAC address. Find your MAC address here.